Monday, April 30, 2018

I just returned from 4 days on Orange Beach (Turquoise Place) as I like to go before the water warms too much & the algae & jellyfish take over. The water was crystal clear and still quite cool to the touch. In fact, Friday was windy & chilly on the beach and you needed some outer gear to block the chill of the sea breeze. Much of the Gulf has below normal SSTs (Sea Surface Temps) and perhaps that will mean a later start for any Gulf storms? Saturday & Sunday were warmer & near perfect much like what NOLA had with pleasantly cool mornings & warm, but not hot afternoons. All that is changing this week as high pressure shifts to the east setting up a deep flow off the Gulf for many days. You’ll start to feel the difference on Tuesday and our nice crispy cool mornings will be a thing of the past. A few showers will be around tomorrow, but the better rain threat will be over the weekend as a weak front will stagger into our neighborhood. I like what David said tonight. It’s way too early to know how widespread the weekend rains will be. With a front approaching, we will have increased rain chances. But the main upper energy will stay far to our north and the front could just as easily wash out bringing us little in the way of shower activity. It will not be as nice a weekend for Jazz Fest, but RIGHT NOW it doesn’t look terrible either.

Well both Oklahoma & Kansas set records for no tornadoes in April (add in Nebraska too). That could change during the next 2-3 days as SPC has a level 3 (enhanced) risk for a good part of the central plains. Locally our April was over 2 degrees cooler than normal (seems like it was more), but that didn’t even crack the top ten of coldest Aprils on record. Many cities from the Great Lakes to New England had top five coldest Aprils with several locations being the coldest ever. There are signs that a weak El Nino may be trying to form and that would be good news regarding the upcoming hurricane season. El Nino creates more upper wind shear so perhaps all the hype about another active season could be overblown. I do like seeing cooler water temperatures as that was not the case last year. Stay tuned!